Making his way back…

...a new false face... 

(or: An exercise in parentheticals, photographicals 
and confessionals)

 

He is making his way back.
After a long Hiatus.
(and here I am, speaking
of myself in the third person,
as I said I would not, and 
capriciously capitalizing words
for emphasis, as I never said 
I would not and yet always felt 
that I never would or should).

He has lost two businesses.
(No, I don’t in point of fact 
know where they’ve run
off to, where they might
be hiding, or just how I
lost them…well, actually
I do have an idea or two—
a few certain things that I
in fact do know contributed
to said losing but I was 
speaking more about the 
insubstantiality of what we
mean when we say “business”
as well as the fact that they 
[“businesses”] are in fact
non-corporeal [though often
somehow "corporate"] “things” 
whose true “existence”
can always be questioned.  
[They are not “things,” really,
are they? They cannot be 
truly touched or felt, except
perhaps in the heart and 
sometimes the pocket-book])

He has lost all his hair.  
(No, not like early onset 
[Rather funny, that--calling
it “early onset” as if I was not 
in fact closer to fifty than I am 
to forty!] male pattern baldness 


but like [no, no—not “like” but 
actually "as", actually "in the form 
of", actually "a real-life case of"]
alopecia universalis, as in 
complete, 100%, top-to-bottom, 
front-to-back, all-over [and under,
for that matter--not that you asked] 
bodily hair loss.)  He has lost
ALL his hair. 

(There I go, capitalizing 
for emphasis again.) 



He now looks in 
the mirror and sees a 
“freak” (It’s o.k.. I am
quite comfortable with the
label and the idea and do not
think of “freak” as a bad word
at all, and really—no eyebrows? 
no eyelashes? I really do look 
pretty freaky[at least with my 
glasses off]) and embraces it.

But also (and really, more 
importantly) he sees a man 
who did not in fact have a 
heart attack or an aneurism 
or a stroke or any number 
of other possible stress-
induced maladies or illnesses.  


He only lost all his hair and 
this is a thing that can, 
in fact, be felt or perhaps 
a thing which can be felt 
not to not be there—its ab-
sence is a thing that is felt.

He has been told that 
he wears it well.  (The 
baldness, that is.  And
I would tend to believe 
this was patronizing 
feel-good head-patting 
if it did not come so often 
from veritable strangers
who seem to have no 
vested interest in how 
I look or my feelings 
there-from.)

No, he looks in the mirror 
and is thankful. Grateful, even.   
(Even though I cannot say to 
whom or to what it is I should 
direct said gratitude, said 
thankfulness.) He looks 
like someone who has had
chemo-therapy but he has 
not and so every look in the 
mirror is a reminder—a re-
minder of just how lucky he 
is. How lucky he is to still 
have his family, his wife and 
daughter.  How lucky he is to 
still have any thing at all.  How 
lucky he is in fact to be capable
of still having—of being a po-
ssessor; one who may be said 
to possess things.  How lucky
he is to be capable of considering
whether or not he even believes 
in such things as luck or chance.



He finds himself lucky to
be given this chance 
to be reminded of how
lucky he is every time 
he looks in the mirror,
to be reminded with 
this loss of how much 
he still has, of how much
he has not lost, to be re-
minded (to be minded—
again!) of the value of 
being able to find value.

Not that he in any way 
feels that he possesses
either wife or daughter
or any one or any thing
but more that he is now 
in a position to possess
the knowledge of what
it truly means to possess
and what it means to 
possess the knowledge of
how little we can be said to 
truly possess anything.
Or what it means to lose.
(Or, I think, perhaps the
only things that we can 
truly be said to possess
are intangible things.)
Businesses, hair, sleep.

He has lost all of these
things.  (But now--you
see--now I am losing the 
losing of them as well.)



He now finds himself in
the valuable position of 
being possessed of the 
right kind of knowledge 
to be able to contemplate 
the concept of possession, 
right here, right now, on 
this page.

He is learning to let go.
(Still and always, [in still-
ness and in all ways] I am 
learning how to do this.)